


data: skip, erase, encrypt, reprogram, restore

by aethernity



Category: Super Sentai Series, Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 11:20:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1856185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aethernity/pseuds/aethernity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first human to survive a hyperspace transport, the rather unexpected side effect the vaccine program has on him, and things he remembers from before he became Enter. Also, things he doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	data: skip, erase, encrypt, reprogram, restore

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty much AU, seeing as Enter's origins here defy canon as established in Episode 30: Messiah Shutdown.

**vi.**

When he wakes, he is Enter, and Enter is him. There is nothing to question, nothing to miss - because what does a mind now completely devoted to Messiah have to miss about the human world? He is a perfect existence, Messiah is his liege, and the humans will be theirs to rule over.

Time stops, and he never ages. It makes little difference to him. He fights for Messiah, squashes a few pests along the way, chastises the engineers for the occasional slip-up but gets along perfectly well with them anyway - they do their duty to Messiah, he does his. They owe it to Messiah, after all, for saving their existences, for preventing them from dying in transport. The same way he owes it to Messiah that he still exists.

It never once crosses Enter’s mind that Messiah is, perhaps, not the only reason he is still alive.

Messiah makes sure of that.

\-----

**v.**

Around him, everything is going to hell.

He remembers shouting, screaming, the crying of a young girl in her mother’s arms. Fingers flying over keyboards, lines and lines of programming appearing and disappearing, screens going black then blue then haywire, a desperate dash to a room soon to be barricaded in with chairs and tables and whatever else they could find.

He also remembers reaching the door, only to find it already jammed shut.

A roar somewhere down the corridor shakes the building, and as the monitors in the corridor light up, he finds himself confronted with it – the Centre’s pet project gone wrong, the monstrosity of sentient data they were all trying to run from, trying to contain, trying to stop. A strange green glow lights up the building then, and he looks out a shattered window to see the entire compound, layer by layer, disappearing into nothingness, into hyperspace. Shock overwhelms him, and he barely even notices the cables wrapping around his wrists and pulling him against the wall – because _if they’re transporting the centre into hyperspace, everyone will die._

Everyone except him, that is.

The ground seems to fall away from below him, and he prepares for that feeling of falling endlessly, ready to hit hyperspace, but it never comes. Instead, he looks up to see Messiah, the form it has taken, the looming skull of data and knowledge and power that no one ever thought it would become. It laughs then, a deep and booming and evil sound, and he can feel nothing but panic and terror as the cables around his wrist tighten and a third cable snakes towards his neck. _You will serve me. You, in fact, will do nicely._

The last thing he remembers, as he falls into oblivion, is fear.

\-----

**i.**

Sakurada Yousuke glances over at the new addition to the facility. He’d looked over the boy’s profile, his credentials and university testimonial, and was sufficiently impressed. Twenty-four years old, but a model researcher, with intellect and curiosity and accomplishments to boot, as well as an unfailing (sometimes unnerving) politeness about him.

“So, welcome to the Dainan Transportation Research Centre, and welcome aboard.” Amidst the applause, the new addition bows deeply.

“Thank you. I’ll do my best.”

\-----

**iii.**

He’s seated in Transport Hangar Three, transport beams on either side powered up and ready to be fired, scientists bustling around him, monitors live with data and video feeds and programs that he’d helped to write. The lead scientist is talking, but his voice is barely a drone in the background. _We’ll transport you into the receiving hangar the vaccine program should keep you safe but may have side effects i hope you know what you’re in for you have no idea how much science will owe you if this succeeds..._

 _...good luck good luck thank you good luck…_ All the passing scientists’ well-wishes blur into an endless stream of words that quickly cease to lose their meaning. Everyone, himself included, is perfectly aware that everything could go wrong - but he was here because they needed someone, needed _him_ , right?

He buries his anxiety in the sensations of it all. The coolness of an alcohol swab against bare skin, the uncomfortable prickliness of the monitor strapped to his chest and its straps and buckles digging into his back, and the sting of needles piercing skin and muscle. The ringing of his eardrums as too-close speakers drone a distorted _initiating transport in ten_ , the sweat trickling down his bare back, the weight on the soles of his feet-

And pain. It tears through him, searing his back and limbs and suddenly everything is on fire, bringing him to his knees as the hangar erupts into calls of _stop the experiment_ and a flurry of keystrokes, as the transport beams glow a bright green and begin their work. A raw scream of agony drowns out everything, drowns out the speakers’ robotic drone of _transport initiated_ , drowns out the panicked scientists’ futile attempts to halt the transport already underway, drowns out all coherent thought and feeling except the excruciating pain down his back and the desperate mantra of _make it stop make it stop make it stop._ Then the ground seems to fall away from below him, and he is falling, falling, falling. 

The last thing he remembers, as he falls into oblivion, is pain.

\-----

**iv.**

He opens his eyes to find himself lying on the floor drenched in sweat, his head feeling like he’d been hit repeatedly with a sledgehammer. The pain, he finds, is gone - mostly gone, anyway, but everything aches, and his back feels sore and tender. He tries to stand, trembling, and immediately regrets it when the room spins and darkens around him. Before he can hit the ground, someone catches him and pulls him into a sitting position. His brain finally begins working again when Sakurada Yousuke grabs him by the shoulders, and shakes him hard. “Hey, talk to me! Are you okay? Can you hear me?”

His lips are dry, and his voice hoarse from screaming. “Where am I?”

“Transport Hangar Seven.”

It takes a few moments for that piece of information to register, and a few more for his brain to return to normal levels of function. The hangar is deathly quiet, with all eyes on him and him alone. Nearby, Sakurada Michiko is staring at him with an expression of shock and wonder.

“Successful transport aside, why are they staring?” Sakurada Yousuke doesn’t smile at the attempt to break the tense silence.

“Let’s get you a mirror.”

\-----

**vii.**

“You have failed me.”

Enter’s smile is practiced, perfect. “And I regret that, Your Majesty.” The same exchange happens every time the Go-Busters get in his way - the empty, placating words, the rage that shakes all of hyperspace (and wrecks whatever the engineers are working on at that point in time - Enter almost pities them), the same attempt to convince Messiah to follow his plan for once. (He never succeeds - it always ends in a few rubbish Metaroids created for the sole purpose of amusing Messiah, and then Enter’s liege goes back to demanding instant world domination.) Enter knows his part in this scene, knows what lines to deliver and how, and submits to Messiah as always, playing the part of the faithful servant with that practiced confidence and eloquence developed over time.

As he motions to leave, however, the script changes, and blindsides Enter completely.

Cables snatch the computer away from him, bind his wrists and yank him away from the platform as it disappears in a flurry of data. Enter stares at the looming skull, confusion and indignation building to a crescendo in him. “If you would kindly put me down, Your Majesty?” The skull leers at him, and somewhere in the reaches of hyperspace, he can hear Escape laughing.

That little-

The cables tighten around his wrists, and Messiah comes closer and closer. “Perhaps it was unclear earlier, Enter. You have failed me.” Enter’s gut clenches, an unfamiliar sensation. “A pity you were less useful than I would have liked you to be.” As Messiah’s laughter echoes through hyperspace, Enter can feel Messiah withdraw from his mind, and suddenly everything comes rushing back - the locked doors, Messiah, the Center, the pain, the staff, and the shock in his own eyes as he looked in the mirror-

Then the cables hurl him backwards, and he falls.

The last thing he remembers, as he falls into oblivion, is horror at what he’s become.

\-----

**ii.**

They’re arguing again, in the main laboratory. The door is open just a fraction, enough for him to see and hear the argument.

“You can’t! If something goes wrong-”  
“If something goes wrong? We won’t know until we try, will we?”  
“But think! If the program doesn’t work, and something happens- or if we transport the subject, and it doesn’t come back- if _you_ don’t come back-”

The female scientist doesn’t continue. They all know what she means – that the Centre will lose a brilliant researcher, and that she will lose so much more. But at the same time, so much is at stake - the future of hyperspace transportation, the validation of the research she's spent years working on, the betterment of mankind... He stands by the doorway, hesitating, casting a glance down the corridor at the room where the scientist’s son is asleep, completely unaware of his parents' situation.

It’s not very hard to make his decision.

The creak of the door breaks the silence, and the two scientists look up to see him standing in the doorway.

“Dr. Sakurada, Mrs. Sakurada? I’ll do it.”

\-----

**viii.**

It’s a rainy night, one of those nights when the skies seem fully intent on drowning a particularly unfortunate Red Buster out on 2am patrol duty. Hiromu curses under his breath - he keeps ending up with rain while on patrol, and never the kind of light drizzle that _occasionally_ happens while Yoko’s on duty. Tonight, the storm is unrelenting, and Hiromu wants nothing more than to get this done and over with and return to base, where a warm cup of cocoa, fluffy pillows and warm blankets await.

An hour in, and Hiromu sees the person he least wants to see, especially at this time. Instinct has the Ichigan Buster in his hand, finger on the trigger, and his body ready for a fight, but something feels...off about the confrontation. Hiromu hesitates, his grip on the gun tightening - but something about the stumbling, shivering figure tells him that there is more to this.

The figure collapses with a sharp cry of pain, and against his better judgment, Hiromu moves closer. At the sight that meets his eyes, a wave of shock and almost pity washes over him. Enter’s sitting with his knees drawn to his bare chest, head bowed low. He’s trembling like a leaf in the storm, and on his forearm, blood from a deep gash mingles with rainwater, little red rivulets running down his arm. Rainwater runs down the bare skin of his back, down his shoulders, pooling slightly at his collarbones. Hiromu knows he should do something, should at least get Enter back to base to get those injuries looked at and treated while Command decides what to do with him (last he checked, only humans could get injured, but something was different, unusual about Enter now). Yet, Hiromu finds himself rooted to the ground, unable to tear his eyes from Enter’s injuries, from the sight of Enter in this state, from Enter.

And from the pair of brilliant white wings protruding from Enter’s back.


End file.
